Overview

8gears Container Registry is a Harbor-based service for managing container images and OCI artifacts, with hosted, customer-cloud, and self-hosted deployment options. It fits teams that need registry controls alongside flexibility over where the service runs. Its strongest case is the combination of deployment choice and enterprise identity, security, and automation capabilities; the 1 GB free tier is modest, and the paid plans require custom pricing.

Key features

Projects, proxying, quotas, retention policies, and replication give teams practical ways to organize artifacts and control their flow and lifecycle. Multi-region replication suits distributed environments, while OCI support extends the registry beyond container images. Immutable tags help protect published versions from being changed.

Identity options include OIDC, LDAP, SAML 2.0, group synchronization, fine-grained RBAC, and workload identity federation. Trivy scanning, content trust and signing, SSL/TLS, and encrypted storage address image and registry security. Organization-wide vulnerability views, SBOM, image policies, and audit trails exported to enterprise systems add visibility for teams managing security across projects.

Terraform, Pulumi, the REST API, and Kubernetes CRDs support automation. Enterprise audit-log shipping can integrate with Kafka, SQS, SNS, Pub/Sub, and webhooks. This is a useful range for platform teams, but audit-log shipping and message-queue integrations belong to the Enterprise plan rather than the free tier.

Pricing

The Individuals plan is free and remains free forever. It includes 1 GB of storage, unlimited private repositories, and community support. That is a low-friction option for individual use or a small registry footprint, but the storage ceiling makes it a poor fit for growing image collections; additional storage is billed per GB per month.

Dedicated is billed monthly, with custom pricing. It includes a dedicated Harbor instance, unlimited users and teams, 1000 GB of storage, a custom domain, and no egress fees, plus a 14-day free trial. The larger allowance and no-egress-fee term make it more suitable for teams with substantial usage, although the trial is time-limited and the monthly price is not displayed.

Enterprise uses custom pricing under an individual agreement. It adds dedicated infrastructure, multi-regional high availability, advanced authentication, a custom SLA, professional services, and white-label options. This tier suits organizations that need tailored deployment and service terms; smaller teams may find its agreement-based pricing and enterprise emphasis unnecessary.

Platforms

8gears supports API, Linux, self-hosted, and web access. Deployment can be hosted SaaS, managed in a customer's cloud, or licensed for Kubernetes self-hosting, including on-premise and air-gapped environments. Managed-cloud options include AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI, Exoscale, and STACKIT. Fully managed deployments include automated backups, upgrades, patching, and 24/7 monitoring, with a stated 99.99% availability track record. Level 3 engineering support is available Monday to Friday, 9–17 CET, by email, chat, and video conferencing.

Who it's for

The product is aimed at enterprises, cloud providers, multi-cloud and hybrid teams, IoT and edge businesses, and independent software vendors. It is a particularly strong fit when identity controls, deployment location, and supply-chain visibility matter together. A team that only needs a small private registry may be better served by the free tier of 8gears or a simpler alternative.

Pros and cons

Pros: Hosted, customer-cloud, and Kubernetes self-hosted deployments let teams align registry operations with infrastructure and data-location needs.
Pros: Broad identity, scanning, signing, SBOM, and audit capabilities address both access control and supply-chain oversight.
Pros: Terraform, Pulumi, REST API, and Kubernetes CRDs give platform teams several routes to automate registry operations.
Cons: The free plan's 1 GB storage limit is restrictive for teams accumulating images, and extra storage carries a per-GB monthly charge.
Cons: Dedicated and Enterprise use custom pricing, making paid-plan cost harder to assess before engaging with the provider.
Cons: Level 3 support is limited to weekdays, 9–17 CET, which may not suit teams requiring round-the-clock engineering assistance.

Alternatives

Compare container registries if you want to consider the broader category. Choose Inedo ProGet when a free edition with unlimited feeds for private packages and Docker matters more than its limited security and compliance features. STACKIT Compute Engine is a different kind of option: consider it when you need a small EU01 virtual machine, not a managed registry.

JFrog Container Registry is worth considering when a free, self-managed registry is the priority and its Docker, OCI, Helm, Helm OCI, and Generic support is sufficient; its free edition does not include Xray. Choose KakaoCloud Container Registry if the stated outbound-traffic allowance and per-GiB billing better fit your usage. Project Quay suits teams seeking an Apache 2-licensed open-source distribution willing to provide a database and reliable image storage.

Satama Container Registry is an option for use cases meeting CSC's free-of-charge policy. Choose Singularity Registry Server if you want an open-source registry deployed and operated on your own server. Yandex SpeechKit is a speech API rather than a container registry, so it serves a different need.

Verdict

Choose 8gears Container Registry if your team needs Harbor-based artifact management with enterprise access controls, supply-chain visibility, automation, and a choice of hosted, customer-cloud, or self-hosted operation. Its main advantage is that breadth of capability and deployment control; its main drawback is the 1 GB free allowance and custom-priced paid tiers, which make it less suitable when you need predictable, low-cost scaling.

	8gears Container Registry	Exoscale Container Registry
Free plan	Yes
Free trial	Yes
Paid from	Free
Platforms	api, Linux, self-hosted, Web	Web
Free plan	Yes	No
Image scanning	Yes	Yes
OCI artifacts	Yes	Yes
Immutable tags	Yes	Yes
Retention policies	Yes	Yes
Replication scope	multi-region
Included storage	1,000 GB

8gears Container Registry vs Exoscale Container Registry

8gears Container Registry

Exoscale Container Registry